Bring back 10-day lingots

NOT NICE DUO!! - Bring back the 10-day lingots. For people who have completed their tree, there's pretty much no other 'scorecard' left for us when you take away the the 10-day lingots..... it's the last little bit of 'play' in keeping score- we get no positive 'ticky marks' for re-golding, or reviewing lessons and very little positive feedback for translation .........so.......not much incentive to keep active here when you take away the last little bit of 'gaming' we have to play around with.......just saying.......no new lessons.....was great while it lasted, but you're taking away the last bit of play......

if others agree that taking away the 10-day lingots are a meaningful loss to the experience and incentive, please comment and up-tick............

April 17, 2015

72 Comments

Bingo. 10-day lingots are important manifestations of positive re-enforcement. When you finish a tree, you basically have to rely on 7 day wagers or translation up-votes for positive feedback. The latter option is frustrating to me because I constantly have to go to the lingot store to remind myself how far I am from a payoff . The former is frustrating to me because it happens more or less at random. Going a week without an upvote is tremendously discouraging.

Exactly. Duo was famous for gamifying language learning, for making it fun and motivating. We were encouraged to work daily and truly learn the lessons. Why are they killing the mechanism?

First they stopped rewarding flawless lesson. Now they've stopped rewarding streaks. The only automatic reward left is for completing lessons. This means we're encouraged to what - race through the tree without an effort to remember and after that not come back, forgetting everything?

Plus I just bought a streak freeze, for the first time, after losing several streaks over 100 and one over 300, so as soon as I spend 10 for a streak freeze they remove the incentive. It is all silly, but I was surprised how much better I've been learning since they installed the lessons that don't make you start over if you lose 3 owls. The thing most silly about lingots is that there's nothing (much) to buy with them. If they let us buy chances for lotteries for free trips here or there, there'd be big incentive and I KNOW there'd be a lot of companies competing to supply prizes for those lotteries just for the advertising on here. This site is valuable in terms of its educated demographic. Goodbye streak, but I wish they'd return the 10 lingots I just spent for the streak freeze.

Hello I understand that some change are necessary, but perhaps could be a nice idea to give back the lingots people that spent it for the streak freeze . For me for example I completed the knowledge tree, and now there are few ways to take new lingots (yes, I spent lingots to streak freeze).

I know. What keeps us going? For some time I've thought they should have real prizes for lingots. It would be a benign form of advertising. Airfare and hotels. We're a very valuable demographic, the language learners of the world.

I don't know if there's a formal announcement per se--but there are lots of posts about it. if you go look at the ways to earn lingots, the 10-day streak is gone........if you still see it there, then you're not in the test.......at least that's how I understand it.....

I have to say that sometimes I just don't understand Duolingo's management. People are complaining and complaining about bugs in the skill strengths and problems in immersion, and they decide to put their effort into something everybody was perfectly fine with.

Well, people have also been complaining for ages that they want to have a different lingot system here - buying more stuff in the lingot store and such things. In fact, lingots are useless for most of the people right now and I think that's why they want to change the system now.

In my opinion, people keep their streak because they want to show their steady progress, their passion for Duolingo and its services offered, try to encourage others and keep their own motivation high for themselves.

Receiving way too many lingots for a long streak is not necessary, but receiving nothing is the wrong way. It'd find it better if we could receive one more lingot every ten days, but that's my personal opinion and people may disagree with that.

Um.... earning lingots is a big motivator for me in keeping my streak. Seeing my number of lingots go up is (weirdly, I admit) a bit motivator for me.

I'm not in the test group, but it makes me so sad to think that this is the route they're going down :-((((. In fact, I enjoy sharing lingots for good comments, and now, I feel like I need to hoard them!

Most people were complaining that there is nothing useful to buy in the store. It doesn't matter how you get your lingots if there is just nothing you want to buy. On the other hand, experience points have lost their importance on Duolingo, you still can't see a progress bar for your next level. Because of this, I thought of lingots as the new experience points, which you get primarily for steady and continuous studying.

And don't forget two things: People like us with extremely long streaks are rather rare, plus every real economy has some overwhelmingly rich people. So today the economy on Duolingo is just like most real-world economies: Some are very rich, most have far less. The difference is, you don't really need your lingots on Duolingo.

April 18, 2015

[deactivated user]

Billionaires don't need most of their money either. It is just a way to keep score.

The problem is not the awarding of lingots but with the lack of available items with which to spend them on.

In my humble opinion, they should be concentrating on the Lingot store items and not on reducing awarding lingots. From browsing the board (in my short time here ) I think this is what the majority of people have been asking to be done, not diminish awarding lingots.

I think that may depend on the version of the android app. I have my apps set to NOT auto-update. Today I used the app (version 3.4.0) and somehow the new system had been implemented - no hearts and also a percentage progress bar. I did at least get 10 points for a review lesson. My older versions - 2.7.2 and 2.9.0 were still fine. Both of those versions are before the addition of the Coach to the android app.

They've taken away the reward for keeping up a streak? Now I'm on level 11 and levelling up takes longer, I was starting to use lingot-increase as a motivator. Knowing I was going to be rewarded for increasing my streak really helped on days when I felt less motivated.

Of course, that's not the main reason for using the site, it's great to have free and advert-free lessons etc, but why take away another feature that aids motivation?

I just noticed in the lingot store at the bottom, where it lists the ways to earn lingots, that the old message has returned, saying that you can earn lingots for maintaining a streak:

"Earn 1 lingot for every 10 days on a streak (1 for 10, 2 for 20, etc)"

Can anyone, who previously was not getting streak lingots, verify that you are now getting them again?

If the A/B test has failed and we are now getting streak lingots again, I wonder: Will DL refund me 147 lingots for my 180-, 190-, 200-, 210-, 220-, 230-, and 240-day streak milestones that I passed when I was on the wrong side of this A/B test?

I see the same message- but can't tell what that's going to mean to those of us who were deprived of the lingots we earned during the 'test' -- would be nice if there was actually some communication from Duolingo on this - but I guess we'll have to wait and see

thanks- I did see your post and the replies after I saw your comment on here-- I still haven't seen anything 'official' from duo.....I saw that you got your missing 147 lingots- that's great....wonder how that happened......I'm out 301......I do think they should restore the ones people missed- but who knows.......

Before I stopped getting my streak lingots around day 180, I had never (since my first few days on DL, on a travel day) missed a day. Since then, I have missed three days (and spent 10 lingots for the streak freeze to preserve my streak). This is anecdotal evidence that the streak lingots are a "gamification" motivator to keep me coming back to the site consistently.

I haven't heard myself why taking away the 10 day streak lingots would be a good thing. I never heard why the XP bar went away either. Or why we can't write on our own profile activity. I do not like this.

Why did the XP bar go away? Watching your experience crawl or soar to a new level was another great motivator. Now levels just feel random. One day you finish a lesson or practice and BAM - new level.

What wer're left with now is just negative reinforcment. Fail to stay on track? You broke the streak. Broke the streak? Counter goes back to zero. All sticks, no carrots. That's not a game - that's homework.

So apparently we have an inflation of lingots. I don't think so but fine. Use a different kind of motivator, then. Show a happy owl for every flawless lesson and each new week of everyday practice. Every 100xp, show how close we are to the new level. Something.

I still think Duolingo is the best way to learn a language short of immersion, I just don't see why are they making it worse.

Oh no =( I rely a lot on the 10 day lingots because I travel sometimes and do not have mobile internet to do my classes. So I often have to use the steak freeze. This change is really not nice DUO!
Can some of you guys help me and send me some lingots? I only have 36 left =/ Would appreciate it a lot!

I'm 4 days behind you in terms of a streak! Currently you (OP) have 398 vs. my 394. I was upset when I didn't get 39 linguist for a 390-day streak. Now I won't get my 40 lingots for my 400-day streak. Or 50 for 500-day streak...etc. :(

Amen. It's apparently to adjust for inflation, because people were giving lingots away to each other too freely or something? Though it seems to me they could have resolved that by making more ways to spend them, instead.

Report this to the Duolingo support community. Go the the bottom of any page, click on help, scroll to the bottom of that page and click Contact us. This will make Duolingo think twice about making this the new common.

Although I agree with what you are saying, the people at Duolingo work so hard to make all of this free. I am so thankful that I can learn a language at absolutely no cost. They work so hard to make the sight free of little bugs or glitches, and make sure that we get the best education possible. Just stop and think for a moment about how blessed we are that we get a free education :D

When has Duolingo ever listened to the users input. I like the streak bonus as well, but nothing we say will change any design change they have in mind. Bit rich that they still offer a streak freeze in the shop though. LOL.

yes- that has been very good news............unfortunately, they did not make everyone whole by giving us the lingots we earned during the test.......you'd think they'd be fair to the guinea pigs!! LOL..oh well.....apparently not

I did not receive any lingots for hitting the 460 or the 470 day marks. So why keep the streak alive. The lingots gave me a motivation for the days when I was feeling "Ehy bother? Take a break." This removal of the reward for hard work is a mistake!

Taking away the Lingots makes no sense at all. It costs Duolingo nothing
to give them out. They are just being weird. There are a few other things
they have added that are just garbage, if they have to take something out
remove them.
I know that they are (or they should be) doing a major rewrite to make this
all work in HTML because FLASH is going away. Hope the 10 ingots
don't get lost in the shuffle.

I was going to try that.....but the whole language-changing bit was too much of a hassle on my pc-was spilling over into other applications and causing more trouble than it was worth......if I could do it without having to mess with the broader language settings I might reconsider........